When 'Vicar of Baghdad' Andrew White sat on Saddam's throne

T My first career was in medicine. I worked as an operating department practitioner and then specialised in anaesthetics - so I can put people to sleep with sermons or drugs. Later I ran the cardiac arrest team at St Thomas' Hospital in London. One day, while praying in the hospital garden, overlooking the River Thames, I thanked God for the opportunity to work at the hospital and for everything I had achieved. And then I asked God, "What shall I do next?" I thought he would say I should stay at the hospital forever, but instead I got this profound sense I was being called into the Church. I didn't want to do it. I objected and fought it for half an hour. And then I gave in.

I went to Cambridge University to study Christian theology, but I found it boring, so I switched focus to Judaism. I consider myself a Christian with Jewish leanings. I got very involved in the university's Jewish Society and became an active member of an orthodox synagogue. For my doctoral research, I went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I was shocked to discover a lot of the people there were woolly liberals who didn't really believe in anything.

I was ordained at Southwark Cathedral and worked in London for a few years. Then I moved to Coventry Cathedral and became director of the International Centre for Reconciliation. One of the first things I learned were the words of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He said, "Who is my enemy? It is the person whose story I have not heard." A lot of my work involves trying to develop a forum for bringing enemies together, to hear the story of the other side. I did a lot of work in Israel and the Palestinian Authority areas. I wasn't just friends with the Jewish community - one of my closest friends was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. I started off hating him, but ended up working closely with him. I helped to formulate the Alexandria Declaration, a peace treaty between Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders in Israel and Palestine. That project raised my profile and was the foundation of all my subsequent work in reconciliation.